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Fantasy. Fiction. African American Fiction. Science Fiction. HTML: A multiple Hugo and Nebula Award winner's powerful saga of survival and destiny in a near-future dystopian America. One of the world's most respected authors of science fiction imagines an apocalyptic near-future Earth where a remarkable young woman discovers that her destiny calls her to try and change the world around her. Octavia E. Butler's brilliant two-volume Earthseed saga offers a startling vision of an all-too-possible tomorrow, in which walls offer no protection from a civilization gone mad. Parable of the Sower: In the aftermath of worldwide ecological and economic apocalypse, minister's daughter Lauren Oya Olamina escapes the slaughter that claims the lives of her family and nearly every other member of their gated California community. Heading north with two young companions through an American wasteland, the courageous young woman faces dangers at every turn while spreading the word of a remarkable new religion that embraces survival and change. Parable of the Talents: Called to the new, hard truth of Earthseed, the small community of the dispossessed that now surrounds Lauren Olamina looks to her�??their leader�??for guidance. But when the evil that has grown out of the ashes of human society destroys all she has built, the prophet is forced to choose between preserving her faith or her family. The Earthseed novels cement Butler's reputation as "one of the finest voices in fiction�??period" (TheWashington Post Book World). Stunningly prescient and breathtakingly relevant to our times, this dark vision of a future America is a masterwork of powerful speculation that ushers us into a broken, dangerously divided world of bigotry, social inequality, mob violence, and ultimately hope.… (more)
User reviews
An all-too real future world torn down by global warming and the people who try to survive. Delving into it all: politics, religion, race, and gender, she captivates with a new belief system. I have to admit, by the end, I was a convert.
Lauren, the narrator, has been brought up in a religious household (Baptist) and is very preachy, planning a new, more secure future on a kind of religion she refers to as Earthseed, perhaps on another planet, and to my mind she goes on too much about God, God is Change. There is no place for God is Love in this 2020s world, all is self-defence, with guns, pillaging, drugs, arson, even cannibalism. As a result of drugs taken by her mother when pregnant, Lauren is afflicted with a condition she calls "sharing", or hyperempathy, where she feels the same pain as anyone she is confronted with, even the pain of death.
Attempting to escape from the mayhem and destruction of her home community, heading northwards (like everybody else, a river of refugees) she makes a nightmarish road trip, on foot, through California, joining forces with former neighbours, an old man, two girls rescued from a burnt-out building, and others. I liked the mix of ethnic peoples, their watchfulness, their wariness, their gradual knitting together. The last pages of the book do plant seeds of hope.